Internet Pharmacy Is Illegal in The Bahamas: Online GLP-1 Risks

What the Pharmacy Act says about internet pharmacy

The Bahamas is one of the few countries in the region whose pharmacy law names online dispensing directly. The Pharmacy Act, 2009 (Chapter 227, Act 8 of 2009) defines an "internet pharmacy" in section 2 as a facility "either within or outside The Bahamas, that dispenses or distributes pharmaceutical products by means of online mechanisms", where the person dispensing has no direct physical contact with the prescriber or the patient¹. The same section excludes internet pharmacies from the legal definition of a pharmacy, so an online seller cannot be a licensed pharmacy under the Act¹.

The operative ban is short. Section 25(3) reads: "No person shall establish or engage in the practise of internet pharmacy in any form." Section 25(4) makes a breach an offence, and because the section sets no amount, the Act's default penalty in section 49 applies: a fine of up to $10,000 on summary conviction¹. The text targets whoever sets up or runs the online operation. Section 25 does not, by its terms, address the patient who places an order.

Two other sections matter for anyone who receives a GLP-1 pen or vial from abroad. Section 27 requires drugs that are manufactured, sold, imported or exported to meet a prescribed international standard such as the British, United States or European Pharmacopoeia, with fines of up to $20,000¹. Section 28 sends import and export to the Customs Management Act¹. In practice, The Tribune reported in February 2026 that Customs focuses on travellers bringing in medicines "not labelled in English" in amounts beyond personal use, and that only a handful of companies are authorised to import medicines⁵.

The Freeport case: RxNorth and Personal Touch Pharmacy

The case that still defines the issue in The Bahamas began in June 2006, when counterfeit medicines sent by courier from Freeport were seized at Miami International Airport³. According to the Court of Appeal judgment reported by The Tribune, Personal Touch Pharmacy in Freeport was used as a "front" for RxNorth.com, the online pharmacy run by Andrew Strempler, importing counterfeit Lipitor, Singulair, Celebrex, Hyzaar and Plavix for export to US patients³. A Royal Bahamas Police Force raid found counterfeit drugs in a Freeport warehouse, and the manufacturers and the FDA tested the seized product as counterfeit³.

According to court papers from Strempler's US guilty plea, cited by The Tribune, he paid $4,000 a month to use the pharmacy's name and the pharmacist's licence, orders were filled through a computer system linked to RxNorth in Canada, and drugs were shipped in bulk from The Bahamas to drop shippers in the UK and the Netherlands Antilles³. Vials and cartons filled in The Bahamas were labelled as filled by RxNorth in Canada⁴. Strempler was serving a 48-month US federal sentence in 2014, when the Bahamas Court of Appeal quashed a magistrate's "no case to answer" ruling and sent the pharmacist's own case back for a new hearing on fraud charges³⁴. Public reports do not show the outcome of that retrial.

Why online GLP-1 sales are the new pressure point

The demand side has changed since 2006. In September 2026, Dr Kristine Parker-Curling, described as the only full-time endocrinologist working in The Bahamas, told The Tribune that demand for drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro is "significantly and steadily increasing"; with monthly costs of $250 to more than $1,500, the paper reported a growing market for "unregulated acquisition" of these medicines². GLP-1 drugs are not yet covered by the national prescription drug plan².

The supply side has its own gap. The Ministry of Health and Wellness' Chief Pharmacist, Dr Gina Archer, told The Tribune that "The Bahamas currently does not have a national drug registration system"⁵. A pharmacist writing to the same paper in October 2025 described the country as "a non-registration market" where licensed importers can sell drugs "without local product registration or batch testing"⁶. A ban on internet pharmacy therefore sits on top of a system with no product register and no national testing laboratory to fall back on.

What lab tests of online semaglutide found

The best evidence on online GLP-1 products comes from test purchases. A University of Pécs team published a study in JAMA Network Open on the quality of semaglutide bought from illegal online pharmacies without a prescription⁸. In a larger follow-up in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the same group screened 1,080 search-engine links: 134 led to 59 unique illegal online pharmacy websites, and the top 30 linked domains drew more than 4.7 million visits in one quarter⁹. None of the three Ozempic pens they ordered arrived. The three vials that did were judged probable substandard and falsified products, with semaglutide purity of 7.7% to 14.37% against the 99% on the label and detectable endotoxin in every sample⁹.

Case reports show what can happen. Hospital pharmacists in Padua described a 31-year-old woman admitted in a hypoglycaemic coma after injecting "Ozempic" bought from a website; toxicology showed the vial contained insulin¹⁰. In Antwerp, an 18-year-old developed euglycaemic ketoacidosis after escalating doses of semaglutide bought online without supervision¹¹. The World Health Organization's medical product alert 2/2024 reported falsified Ozempic batches in Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States and advised patients to "avoid buying medicines from unfamiliar or unverified sources, such as those that may be found online"⁷.

What it means for Bahamian physicians

For a physician in Nassau or Freeport, the law and the evidence point in the same direction. The Pan American Health Organization's February 2026 epidemiological alert on GLP-1 misuse asks countries to strengthen pharmacovigilance and to keep prescribing within approved indications, with individual clinical assessment and continuous monitoring¹². Our News, interviewing local doctors in November 2025, cited FDA warnings about "unapproved or counterfeit versions sold online" and the advice to obtain prescriptions only from licensed sources¹⁴. The FDA's BeSafeRx programme explains how to recognise unsafe pharmacy websites¹³. When a patient arrives already using a pen or vial of unknown origin, asking where it came from, how it was shipped and stored, and whether the packaging matches the registered product is now part of the history.